1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a medium for use in an automatic layout system and a layout method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, product lifecycles have been reduced due to greater product variations and there have been growing demands for customized services since the Internet has become popular. Accordingly, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and one-to-one marketing have been attracting attention. These methods are extremely effective for increasing customer satisfaction and locking in customers.
One-to-one marketing is one type of database marketing. Personal attribute information including age, gender, hobbies, likes, purchase history, etc., is stored in a database for each customer, and is analyzed to make suggestions that meet the customer's needs. A typical approach of this type of marketing is variable printing. Due to the recent progress of desktop publishing (DTP) technologies and the widespread use of digital printers, variable printing systems that output documents customized for each customer have been developed. Accordingly, there are demands to determine a suitable layout of contents that differ for each customer.
In a typical variable printing system, when a customized document is produced, containers are arranged on the document. A container is an object defined as a rectangular region (also called a field) for drawing contents stored in a database. In the variable printing system, the containers are arranged on the document, and then the containers are associated in one-to-one correspondence with the contents of the database to produce the customized document.
In the variable printing system, the container size is fixed. Therefore, in the process of inserting data of each content stored in the database into the corresponding container, if the amount of content data is large relative to the container size, an overflow will occur in which a part of the content data will be lost. Conversely, if the amount of content data is small relative to the container size, a blank space will be left in the container.
In order to solve the above-described problems, a system for dynamically changing the container layout depending on the contents may be applied. The system for dynamically changing the layout can solve the above-described problems of overflow and blank space by determining the container size in accordance with the amount of content data, such as text data and image data, to be inserted into the container.
More specifically, the container size is set to be variable and is increased depending on the amount of content data that is inserted into the container. In addition, with regard to the text data, the font size in the container is set to be variable and is reduced depending on the amount of content data inserted therein. Accordingly, even if the amount of text data inserted into the container is too large to be fitted therein, all of the text data can be displayed in the container.
A layout system in which a part of the above-described technique is achieved is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658.
According to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658, characters are successively input to a container of a predetermined size. If the number of characters is too large to fit all the characters in the container, the size of the container into which the characters are being input is increased while the size of an adjacent container is reduced.
In the above-described layout system, as the amount of text data input to the container is increased, the size of the container for receiving the text data is increased and the size of the adjacent container is reduced as long as the data-inputting process continues. Therefore, the size of the adjacent container is continuously reduced and a balanced layout cannot be obtained. In addition, the above-described layout system does not have a concept of variable printing or inserting contents into corresponding containers.
On the other hand, in a conventional layout method applied to variable data printing, a fixed container is created and content data is inserted into the fixed container. However, when a container with a fixed size is used, overflow occurs if the size of the content data is larger than the container size. In addition, if the content data is inserted into the container by reducing the font size, there is a risk that the font size will become excessively small.
The above-described problems can be solved by a layout method in which a balance between sizes of a plurality of unfixed containers that are associated with each other is taken into account. More specifically, the size of each container is changed in accordance with the size of content data inserted therein, and the amount of change in the container size is adjusted between the containers associated with each other. Accordingly, a layout with a good balance in container size can be obtained.
The above-described layout method may be applied to a plurality of pages. More specifically, containers for receiving the content data are set in advance in a plurality of pages. The content data is inserted into the containers set in a plurality of pages, and the above-described layout method is applied to each page.
However, in the above-described layout method, when, for example, containers A and B are set on first and second pages, respectively, and content data are inserted into the containers A and B, there is a possibility that the size of the content data inserted into the container A is small enough to provide a space for arranging the container B filled with the content data in the first page.
Even in such a case, the above-described layout method simply adjusts the container size in the predetermined pages. Therefore, there is a risk that the appearance of the layout will be degraded and waste pages will be produced.